Victim of vaccination

Photo: Smallpox1962

Davyna Anne Williams of Ton Pentre was 17 at the time of the outbreak in 1962, but it had a long-lasting and very significant effect on her family.

Her father, Ben Davies, was Headmaster at Ferndale Secondary Modern School For Boys and one of the very first people to be vaccinated in the Rhondda Valley. She believes it was this early inoculation that led to his death.

After a long search for a definitive answer to her father’s ill health, a diagnosis of myocarditis was given – an inflammation of the heart, which can be caused by an infection of the heart muscle due to virus or trauma. Mrs Williams’s father died in November 1964, at the age of 53.